Upgrade: XP to W7

I have a Mac Pro with Boot Camp running Windows XP (SP2), and want to upgrade it to Windows 7.  Not as simple as I had hoped.  It sounds like it will take maybe a week rather than an afternoon…

  • I had purchased an upgrade version of Windows 7, assuming (very naively…) that this would save me from having to reinstall all of my apps currently installed under XP.  In practice, the “Upgrade” only works as such from Windows Vista; in the case of XP it essentially does a fresh install, meaning one does have to reinstall any required applications.
  • Also, Windows 7 can’t use XP drivers.
  • In consequence, the upgrade is likely to take a few days…
    • I have many apps, some of which take half a day individually to install.
    • There are also obscure things like device drivers.
  • Steps
    1. My initial step was to backup and defrag
    2. Next I will run [Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor]
      1. This requires all interesting USB devices to be live-connected during the advisor’s scan.
    3. I ran it
      1. It made no major complaints about my system, which it says can also run XP mode (virtual machine).
      2. It does not return an inventory of applications automaticaly, so I’ll just have to make one manually.
    4. ..to be continued…

    Web-Research:

    • http://www.pcworld.com/article/172596/how_to_upgrade_from_xp_to_windows_7.html
      • “How to Upgrade From XP to Windows 7  (Upgrading from XP will be harder than upgrading from Vista.)
      • By Lincoln Spector, PCWorld    Oct 1, 2009 6:00 am
      • Some “factoids”:
        • Windows 7 can’t use XP drivers
        • The Windows 7 installation program moves all of your old folders to a folder called C:\Windows.old.
        • XP Mode (“Virtual PC”)
    • http://forums.pcworld.com/index.php?/topic/67140-how-to-upgrade-from-xp-to-windows-7/page__st__20 (Posts from around Jan 2011)
      • <<I used Zinstall to upgrade from XP to Windows 7. I don’t like Windows 7 so much so this solution was the best for me, I got to keep my old XP desktop with all the old files and programs, and I gradually got used to Windows 7. >>
      • <<You may consider to use WET (windows easy transfer) and PickMeApp: two free solutions to migrate from XP to Windows 7. WET may transfer your XP program settings to Win 7 while portable PickMeApp tool may transfer programs from XP to Windows 7. PickMeApp claims to support unlimited number of programs. and ZInstall is not free>>
    • http://www.pickmeapp.com/content/pograms-unsupported-pickmeapp
      • PickMeApp recognizes about 85% Windows programs. (As of December 2010)
      • The current version of  PickMeApp recognizes only Windows Installer base programs. (As of March 2011)

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